3D printing technology is not a novel technology, it belongs to the last century thinking, the technology of the last century, but belongs to the market of this century.
As early as in the 1980s, the concept of 3D printing technology has been proposed and recognized by foreign scientists and officially entered into people's life in the mid-1990s, which is a rapid prototyping technology Based on digital model files, techniques are used to construct objects by layer-by-layer printing using adhesive materials such as powdered metal / plastic.
Plastic injection molding refers to the method of obtaining a molded product by cooling and solidifying the plastic material completely melted by a screw at a certain temperature and injecting it into a mold cavity at a high pressure. The process started in the 1920s and has nearly a hundred years The development history is currently using a very wide range of very mature industrial manufacturing technology.
In the plastic manufacturing industry, 3D printing and injection molding are often used to PK, on the 3D printing is the terminator of injection molding remarks abound. For manufacturers, the competitiveness of the two who is high who is low One of their favorite topics.
So, 3D printing technology and injection molding What is the difference?
Production mode
Injection Molding Processes As long as injection molds are available, it is possible to produce standardized products on a large scale at a low cost. Therefore, injection molding is still the best choice for conventional mass production and large-scale manufacturing.
3D printers, however, do not require traditional tools, fixtures, machine tools or any tooling to automatically, quickly, directly, and accurately convert a 3D design of a computer into a physical model directly to any shape of the computer, thanks to a large 3D printer Different from the traditional injection molding process characteristics, the more complex non-solid objects, the processing speed, the more savings in raw material costs, so more personalized, diversified product manufacturing.
manufacturing cost
Because of the wide availability of injection molded raw materials, their large scale, rapid standardization of production features also contribute to the reduction of individual product costs, so the cost of injection molding is far less than that of 3D printing in terms of manufacturing costs.
However, for industrial manufacturing, the real cost-saving aspect of 3D printing lies in modifying the prototype. Modifying the prototype only requires modifying the CAD model without any manufacturing costs.
In the injection molding, if the prototype is a steel mold, the modification cost will be relatively low, but if you are using aluminum mold making tools, the cost will be much higher.This is also a lot of enterprises or individuals engaged in mold design, will Choose a creative 3D printer for die design and printing reasons.
Application areas
At present, the injection molding process enables the manufacture of articles of consistent shape in batches, making them ideal for the manufacture of large quantities of standardized products.
3D printing simply inputs the three-dimensional image through the control terminal, can print the raw material into the physical model, even makes the part or the mold directly, thus has shortened the product research and development cycle effectively.Three-dimensional production 3D printer, already widely in the Maker, the construction Design, mold design and other fields have been mature applications.